Bernard Schoenburg: Realtors’ poll has Houston in the lead

Things are looking pretty good in the mayoral race for MIKE HOUSTON if a poll done for a local business group is an indication.

Things are looking pretty good in the mayoral race for MIKE HOUSTON if a poll done for a local business group is an indication.

The Illinois Association of Realtors, working with and at the request of the Capital Area Association of Realtors, had a Gainesville, Fla., firm, SGS, do a 400-response poll of likely Springfield voters from March 10-14.

In the “definite” column, results were 19 percent for Houston, 11 percent for SHEILA STOCKS-SMITH, 3 percent of MIKE COFFEY JR. and 2 percent for FRANK KUNZ. Adding “probable” votes to that raises Houston to 33, Stocks-Smith to 17, Coffey to 7 and Kunz to 4. Adding leaners takes it to 42 percent Houston, Stocks-Smith at 18, Coffey at 10 and Kunz at 6. There were 23 percent unsure, and 2 percent refused to answer.

DAN SALE, CEO of the Capital Area group, read me some of the questions used on the poll, and assured that names of candidates were rotated and there were no leading questions. The poll had other questions not directly related to the race, and the candidate part was designed to provide the organization information, in part to determine if a candidate picked for support would have a real chance.

The organization doesn’t use the word “endorse,” Sale said, but after getting questionnaires from three of the four mayoral candidates (Kunz held true to not filling out such things for such groups), watching three of them in a forum co-sponsored by the group, and getting the poll results, members were told “we think Mike Houston is the best candidate.”

NEIL MALONE, local government affairs director for the Illinois Association of Realtors, said SGS uses live calls (not recorded-voice, push-button polling), and margin of error in the results was plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

“Our sense is that that wouldn’t be accurate,” Stocks-Smith said of the results.

“I find it hard to believe that you can just poll 400 people and get it accurate,” Kunz said.
Coffey said he’s done polling showing he is “moving forward” and he thinks he will “definitely be successful.” He noted that polls two weeks out from last November’s election showed Republican BILL BRADY in the lead for governor, and he was defeated.

Importance of proofreading
Note to ANDY GRISWOLD, candidate for Springfield city clerk: If you make a big deal out of mistakes in city council minutes and the need for better proofreading, it might make sense to do the same with your campaign literature.

In one flier that Griswold’s campaign has been handing out, where we learn that “Griswold gets it!” and a litany of things he says he would do differently from the current clerk, he misspells her first name each of the seven times it is used.

As he didn’t know until I mentioned it to him, Clerk CECILIA TUMULTY’s first name is not spelled “Cecelia.”

“I checked the future pieces,” he told me. “You were right. I was misspelling her name. The error was identified and corrected. More than I can say for Tumulty over the past eight years.”

Nothing like keeping up the offense.

On another piece, by the way, which includes a headline “Compare the candidates,” Griswold luckily did not name Tumulty, but included a quote, next to an asterisk, that records in the clerk’s office were “riddled with errors.”

An asterisk elsewhere on the page refers to “State Journal-Register 10/21/2008.” Griswold says the quote on the flier is his, and just refers to an article. But some might wrongly think the quote was from an article.

An article printed in the newspaper that day about the Tumulty-Tony Libri race for circuit clerk in 2008 does not include the word “riddled,” has a headline reading “Clerks critical of each other’s record keeping,” and mentions mistakes each said the other made.

Another asterisk on the flier — closer to the SJ-R reference — states the incumbent clerk “has allowed hundreds of errors” in the minutes. The story also doesn’t use the word “hundreds,” but has Libri saying he found 38 sets of minutes with errors from early 2007 to late 2008.

“It was not intended to be a misquote” of the newspaper, Griswold said, but the old article shows the issue was raised before.

Tumulty has called some of Griswold’s allegations about errors in minutes an “extreme and misleading allegation.”

Edwards’ signs defaced
An extra, unpleasant message is being communicated on some yard signs in Ward 1.

Mayor FRANK EDWARDS, a former Springfield fire chief, is seeking to be elected a third time as alderman on April 5, and his yard signs feature a small firefighter’s hat. But somebody has been spray-painting an “X” mark over the hat on some signs.

While Edwards did upset some firefighters because he’s reduced minimum staffing each shift from 49 to 46 people, that alone can’t assign blame.

“I would surely hope my membership wouldn’t do it,” said TONY BURTON, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 37, which represents about 200 Springfield firefighters. “We would sure frown on it.”

MIKE CREWS is running against Edwards in the aldermanic race, and said he finds the defacing of Edwards signs “appalling,” adding, “That’s not the type of support I want.”

“I wish it hadn’t happened,” Edwards said.

The signs are staying up, he said, and “It’s kind of had a reverse effect” of helping his effort.

Bernard Schoenburg is political columnist for The State Journal-Register. He can be reached at 788-1540 or bernard.schoenburg@sj-r.com.